Google has killed Android (the brand)
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Google is fixing this in the best way possible. Instead of having a 'Windows Phone', a 'Blackberry', an 'Apple', and an 'Android', you now have a 'Galaxy', a 'Droid', a 'Nexus', and an 'Android' (cheap Chinese), etc.
This means that instead of Blackberry now competing against just Android and being a go-to choice if you didn't like Android, they're now competing in mind share with each individual manufacturer. This is going to be very bad for non-Android, as their brand share is now being heavily diluted among countless choices for general consumers.
Brilliant marketing play - I wonder if it's a conscious move by the Android alliance, or it's just playing out naturally?
I think Google's strategy was to provide no-name handset manufacturers, without the clout to develop these proprietary services or make such deals, with a cheap platform that could browse the web and access Google services. It was a desperate attempt to avoid a world where all mobile services were carrier controlled.
In hindsight they actually needn't have bothered. Apple had sufficient leverage with the iPhone to avoid having to make carrier on-line service lock-in deals. Still, Google couldn't afford to risk that changing, or Apple locking in users to services of it's own.
Maybe, but where the idealism gone? Both on HN, in tech circles, and, yes, at Google, there was some healthy dose of idealism. You know, this thing that make people do thing for something else than money, for the better good of humanity for example.
Idealism (and anger) brought us Linux, Vim, the Web, etc.
And it is killing me to see Google follow the normal evolution of mammoth corps, doing all for the brand idol, trying to launch a vast fishnet and catch as much fish as they can to feed the idol.
Brands are not bad per se. In the old times, a good label for wine was just the name of a family who knew how to craft wine, and same for clocks, cars, and on. The brand was a simple hook to hang a carefully pampered reputation vis-a-vis your clients. The core was craftmanship.
Now the reputation has become an end by itself, and one spend more time or money building a "reputation" than crafting and selling useful (or useless) tools. And the more reputation you have the more you need, just like power.
The people who brought Linux, Vim etc.. had a different motive from the outset. A public company spending millions, if not billions, on a project needs to see return on that investment. I'm not saying that the people involved were not doing it for the sake of improving technology for humanity, and they certainly have, but when you're accountable to shareholders profits often take higher priority.
Too often in these kinds of threads people start with something like "Google should have..." or Apple should..." and arguing from the position of those companies. People play armchair manager and identify fully with a multi billion dollar corporation.
I don't mind studying a business case for education, but I can't cheer on every silly action that a company ends up doing, intentionally or not.
The accountability to shareholders also seems a little like a strawman at times. With regards to Android, a few years ago you could have convincingly argued different product/marketing strategies.
Denying every single "good" action in our professional lifes because it could cheat a shareholder somewhere ... that would definitively be a strawman.
What's right for consumers may not be, and often isn't, right for the business so it's not a case of "right" or "wrong" (because that can vary depending on who's point of view you're looking from) but a case of explaining why the strategy was taken.
>Denying every single "good" action in our professional lifes because it could cheat a shareholder somewhere ... that would definitively be a strawman.
No one said every single good action can be denied and, in fact, I explicitly said that I don't believe the people involved didn't have good intentions. However, if there was a choice to be made between increasing profits or "being good", a public company would often choose the profit route.
I understand what you mean regarding the accountability to the shareholders but I think it's used more as a euphemism to say that they are required to make a profit. They're more than welcome to have a philanthropic branch to their company but if you're investing millions of investor funds without financial gain, questions will be asked; that's the reality.
-- I'm the security master.
Andy has embarrassed himself several times by restricting access to the Android code while, at the same time, claiming that Android was open. Granted most users don't care about the source code but it's a punch in the face for all the OSS enthusiasts who believed in Android's open model.
And Android still developed behind closed doors for no good reason. Not only that but the team is siloed from other parts of Google, like some sort of exclusive club.
Completely agree on this point. The over commercialism of brands has killed the idea of good craftsmanship. Add in our "throw-away" society and it looks bleak for people who just attempt to build something that lasts.
If there is one thing which depresses me most on a daily basis, this is it.
The generics have some great selling points - they're always the first movers on new chipsets, so you can get good specs for cheaper. The downside is that they're bad at the device integration and quality control aspects, and that can really burn the buyer. OTOH, average quality seems to be better than it was just a few years ago - I think in another year or two some of those companies might become worthy competition for the big names.
This import reseller has some really interesting articles on recent market developments: http://www.topnotchtablets.com/articles
In the end I gave up on the generics and got the Lenovo A2109. In the past I've biased towards Lenovo for laptops too - they never have amazing specs for the price range, but they're one of the only manufacturers that are willing to advertise the physical sturdiness of their equipment, and that always puts me over the fence.
Compare this:
* http://us.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/models/notebooks
* http://www.htc.com/us/smartphones/
vs something like this:
* http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/chromebooks.htm...
Google freaked out a bit and turned its vanity Nexus brand into a proper consumer brand. Remember, Nexus was the "developer's phone" originally. The situation with tablets was even worse. Outside of the Xoom and the Transformer, the tablet quality was terrible and just couldn't compete with ipad. Nexus branding is an admission that you can't rely on OEMs anymore. Google can't be Microsoft. It needs to be Apple. Hardware and vendor relationships can't just be passed off to a couple Korean and Japanese firms. You need to do this in-house if you want to compete.
Seems like Microsoft feels it has to be Apple too.
Think about how applications got onto phone before the iPhone; all of the money was "pre-loads". In a world where the only access comes from a a proprietary cable in a factory there's no reality of consumers updating.
Moving from that to a agile development cycle turned out to be too great a leap.
It's brilliant for another reason. Other companies might be tempted to go with another OS. But then they'd be foregoing the network effects and other advantages already established by the Android ecosystem. The competing OS project will have to compete internally with Android.
>Explain.
Ok, basically android is well known, it is not just geeks (yes there are some technophobes that don't, but a minority IMO). It is market dominant. So no, it's not a 'feature' any more, and google don't need to explain that their phones have android. The phone manufacturers have always been keen to create their own brand, over time that obviously becomes more successful. The additional nexus brand is google's way of trying to steer the ship.
So, we knew all this stuff. Google is not actively replacing (killing) the android brand, it's just natural evolution. There is no (more) push to use the 'google' brand like the article suggests, and obviously nexus must be a different brand because it is a subset of android. So, this article has 0 substance, most of it is made up of just telling you normal people don't know their phone OS, fascinating.
How do you even measure something like that? It is impossible, so we only go of our own opinions and experiences.
The fact that consumers don't even necessarily know that their phone runs Android, due to Google and others' branding decisions based on past damage to the brand from certain manufacturers, is not obvious -- or at least, it wasn't obvious to me before I read the article.
Consider a somewhat analogous market: the PC market. In my experience, even the most ignorant users tend to know if their computer's a Dell, Lenovo, or HP, but are also aware that they run Windows, since retailers, manufacturers and Microsoft all prominently feature the Windows brand. (And Mac and Linux users tend to be more conscious of their OS's than the unwashed masses of Windows users -- sometimes to the extent of openly bragging, recruiting, and fighting flamewars for their OS of choice.)
The fact that (the Android portion of) the cellphone market is different from the PC market is also not obvious, and potentially important. Especially from the standpoint of the typical HN'er: A technically literate person, interested in business concepts but not necessarily an expert at marketing, who is personally acutely aware of the OS used on the phone(s) and/or tablet(s) they own, and whose years of experience in the PC market prior to the mobile explosion may have strongly ingrained an instinctive belief that "consumers are always aware of their OS."
Android phones always had a Google logo, and the original branding strategy was for Android to be in the background behind names like "Droid." Android only became a brand because Google has so much more mind-share than mobile OEMs.
Android fading as a brand is, at best, a a sign that the Google ecosystem and OEM brands like Galaxy are coming to the foreground. At worst, it is a sign that Google has lost control of branding and that the Nexus brand has been rolled out too slowly.
One problem Google faces is that OEM brands come with OEM bloatware that is 90% useless. Samsung's mobile device management extensions are the only OEM "innovation" I can think of that is actually a useful improvement. While there is nothing wrong with pre-loading thoughtfully curated software, there ought to be a "reset to Nexus state" icon on every Android's home screen. Conflating OEM bloatware with brands is a very bad outcome.
- a Windows (version) machine. Not Microsoft, not just Windows. But Windows 98, Windows XP, Windows 8
- A (hardware manufacter), with Windows (version), like a Dell PC with Windows XP. Few buy an specific hardware manufacturer brand without caring for the operating system.
- A Mac. Not a Mac OS X, not an Apple machine. Some do know the feline
- An iPhone (model), an iPad
- A Blackberry. Not RIM, not Blackberry (version)
- A Nokia (model)
The only operating system there is Windows, along with its version. Maybe because only Samsung managed to be seen as a quality product using Android, Google is killing the brand. The different apps, settings and behaviour depending on the hardware manufacturer and carrier only make the situation worse. My Android, version whatever, is very different from my friend's Android. Maybe if Google had enforced uniformity, things would have been different. There's no Windows XP from IBM, or Windows XP from Dell. On the other hand, maybe fewer companies would have shipped Android if they could not customize it.
This looks like a business failure to me. It would be better for Google to have its operating system installed in as many devices as possible, and consumers actually buying it because they specifically want Android, with its Google apps and services. MS managed to do it, and I bet Google wanted, but they are giving up. But unlike MS, Google does not sell software, so I guess as long as people are still providing information for ads, it's a good situation for Google.
Deep down, I'm hoping they're de-emphasizing the Android brand so that they can re-use the name, like Microsoft did with Surface. Announcing Google Android, the internet-connected humanoid assistant you never knew you needed.
If you want more convincing, go to the google nexus pages, and see how many references to Android you can find, and where they are. Certainly you can find Android mentioned, but not on the main page, and not prominently.
Here's the Nexus One sites, also no Android to speak of: http://web.archive.org/web/20100319002511/http://www.google....
Android was always supposed to sit in the background -- somewhat similarly to how WebKit works. It's not "WebKit", it's Chrome, Safari, Opera Browser, etc etc.
I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but "Android" is a brand that strikes me as not appealing to the masses.
Anecdotally, I would agree that the kind of people who know what Android is are the kind of people that know what iOS is - i.e. gadget-lovers.
As anecdotal evidence, every non geek that I know, knows about android.
So is 'open source' the problem here? -- "sell an "Android phone" makes you a cheap commodity play. Nobody wants that, they all want to be cool and different. Leave Android to the Chinese knock-offs."
A few weeks ago I heard a CNN reporter refer to the "iPad and Galaxy ecosystems." I wonder if it's already too late.
Android is only mentioned some of time even for Android phones, and it is always out of date versions (usually the 18+ month old 2.3 versions). Even the feature phones are dressed up to look like they are smartphones (eg similar launcher layout). Asymco talk about this in more detail in this episode http://5by5.tv/criticalpath/69 and posting http://www.asymco.com/2013/01/03/the-last-featurephone/
What can be deduced is that some people just use their phones for calls and texting, and that those phones are increasingly running old Android versions.
The move to drop "Android" makes sense. "Google" is a name that people generally trust (despite the efforts of MS's petty 'Scroogled' campaign).
"Android", on the other hand, has come to represent a disjointed conglomeration of smartphones. The OS versions are inconsistent between phones and have names that give no indication of chronology. Reach into a bag of current Android phones and pull out two at random--you have no idea what to expect. Certainly Microsoft deliberately avoided this specific pitfall in their design of Windows Phone 8.
Motorola jumping early into the fray with "Droid" phones running "Android" likely added confusion.
The ad I've seen the most criticizes gmail. The guy says "these ads just showed up" and the woman says "ACTUALLY,...", and, personally, when someone corrects a person by starting out with that heavily emphasized "ACTUALLY..." it sounds really smug.
The second round criticizes the use scanning of gmail messages to display context-sensitive ads. A slightly more fair criticism, but not exactly something google makes a secret of.
They let Android be turned into whatever others wanted it to be, and maybe they promoted the Android brand, maybe they didn't. And if they did, they tried to "own" it. But mostly they've tried to mention it as little as possible, while promoting their own stuff.
Google should've never let this happen. They should've treated it the same way they treat the Chromebooks. Nothing gets changed in ChromeOS unless Google says so. And everything works the same across Chromebooks. All upgrades come from Google for all Chromebooks, and every 6 weeks. It's tight and it's clean. And they get to promote the brand.
But Android is the opposite of that. Google has no control over 99% of the Android devices when it comes to upgrades. This is terrible for users, terrible for developers, and terrible for the security of these devices, whenever there's some big security exploit. Okay, Google can still uninstall apps from your phone in case something like that happens, but they can't really fix the issue usually.
Android should've been run like Chrome and ChromeOS from the very beginning. They should've had the "main brand" (like Chrome), and then they should've had the "open source brand" (like Chromium). Google only ever promotes the Chrome brand, and now that's what OEM's and customers want. They want Chrome. They don't want Chromium.
They missed that opportunity with Android. Android should've been the main bran that Google owns, gets to modify, and updates. If they would've done that from the beginning, then OEM's and customers would've also wanted the unaltered Google-owned Android, rather than the "heavily-customized open source brand" that Android has turned into, and is the main choice for virtually every OEM. So the Android world is like a bizarro world where "Chromium" would be what most OEM's and customer want, not Google's own Chrome.
But there is still time to fix that - by expanding the "Chromebook-tight" Nexus program. Get Nexus become to Android what Chrome is to Chromium. And then try to make 99% of OEM's and customers to prefer the Nexus over the heavily-customized open source "Android". This will probably take 5 years or longer now, but I think it can be done. Even if half of the market is "Nexus devices" 5 years from now, I think it will be worth it.
Of course it would've been much easier to do this from day one, since now they have to fight and uphill battle, and "unconvince" OEM's that they want to use the "Nexus OS"/stock Android, not their own customized stuff. But slowly, they can convince customers to buy those, and in time the OEM's as well, if that's what the people want.
So if they are indeed applying this strategy, then that's good. I've noticed they are promoting the Nexus devices lately. Now they just need to get more OEM's on board (not just one at a time). That would give people more choices through out the year for Nexus devices. Some may like the Nexus, but if they want to buy a new phone 4 months later, they might just get the latest Samsung or HTC device, because they'd still prefer a newer phone.
This also needs to happen for low-end devices. I want to be able to buy my mom a very cheap Nexus phone. I'm thinking $100-$200 range here. It can be done with Cortex A7, a decent 720p capable GPU, and a 800x480 resolution display. It should be good enough performance wise, but Google should still make sure these devices aren't very buggy or something. And they should handle the updates for them.
A good way to start pushing more "Nexus" devices in the market is by getting Motorola to use only stock Android. I think they'd be really stupid if they aren't doing this. Their customers want them to do it. Screw the other OEM's if they get upset about it. They're free to join the Nexus program (and they should be), and use stock Android, too. They'll come around if Motorola shows there's a market for that. So Google needs to stop fooling around, and start being serious taking back control of Android with the Nexus OS/program.
You're looking at it from the angle of a tech consumer, not a business. They've done very well with their Android strategy considering the marketshare it has. Pretty much all Android users will be using at least one Google service which generates revenue or signed up to Google services that will tie them to their ecosystem.
As for customers wanting Nexus phones- I'm not convinced they do. A core of customers do, of course (and I am one of them), but the vast majority are happy with their Samsung Galaxies and their HTC Ones. They don't care about 'stock'. If Motorola use stock Android I think they'll demonstrate that users don't want it (or, don't active prefer it), as the Galaxy S4 dominates the market.
As for upgrades, I don't think it would've been that hard to get the Open Handset Alliance to agree to keep things relatively compatible with each other, and let them handle the upgrades, and save them that cost. I just think Google didn't want to do that at the time, maybe because they thought it was too much work, and they didn't think Android would get that successful or something.
They could've set a clear set of standards, and they could've built a power theming engine to allow manufacturers to do some relative customization of the devices so they look different enough, if they really wanted to go that route, while still making it easy for them to upgrade them.
Second, Google is a team player. The web is more profitable for everyone when things are open and free. Everyone is better off with a smaller slice of a bigger pie. Android has made a lot of people a lot of money.
They do need to get the OS standardized across devices, and I think they are working toward that. There's no reason the Carrier and OEM specific modifications can't just be themes, wallpapers, and applications which are default on the phone, but still on top of (and not in place of) the default Android OS.
Computer OS designed -> sold to manufacturer -> computer designed -> sold to consumer
Phone OS designed -> sold to manufacturer -> manufacturer modifications -> phone designed -> presented to carrier -> carrier modifications -> sold to carrier -> sold to consumer
But according to ForrestN
> Google has been heavily reliant on branding from the very beginning. Being nerdy, "don't be evil," even being anti-marketing are all very conscious branding strategies, emphasized over and over again in PR contexts especially.
The concept of marketing muscle just evaporated for me. It seems like you mean they should have behaved differently.
But as we all know, open beats closed every time.
Manufacturers would not adapt a platform that would not allow them to customize and differentiate from their competitors.
What would have happened is we'd get different OS for each manufacturer. That's a lot more painful than what we have now since it's different codebase/API.
I'll take a fragmented Android than a fragmented mobile OS ecosystem any day.
Samsung, Sony, etc won't be able to make a decent OS but they'd still make an OS that they have some control over.
Why the hell would phone manufacturers use an OS that they can't customize and will make their phone look like every other phone out there?
Look back more than a decade ago on feature phones. Phone manufacturers didn't use a standard OS. Some of them created an OS built on Java ME but you still need to code for a specific manufacturer for your app to work.
One day, web apps will be all we need. That day is definitely not today, but when that day comes google doesn't want Microsoft, apple, or blackberry owning the mobile market.
Apple itself has numerous brands. Apple and Mac OS, running on a Macbook Air or Macbook Pro. That's no more confusing than anyone can handle.
Also, if you look at the play store on a device or the web, you generally see the android character all over it.
You can already see this happening a little because Samsung requires using their ad library, their in app purchase library, not mentioning Google Play at all in descriptions or for pro versions, etc. to publish on Samsung Apps. The store isn't as good as Google Play, but it sure is more profitable for Samsung than Google Play.
Intel did the whole 'intel inside' thing, and people recognized the brand, without really understanding what it was for or caring, they just knew that is what they wanted.
People thought they understood what Microsoft did (and maybe they do), but I think intel was just this thing you absolutely had to have. Nobody could compete with it, because they'd need to explain what it does, and that would likely put people to sleep and they wouldn't understand anyway.
So - there are few reasons to push the OS as a brand to retail consumers. Pitch hard to developers, but for consumers for which the os is app store + launcher - it won't help you increase sales much.
I run into this problem constantly, as I want to refer to "devices that run iOS", but I know that that is a reference that a large number of people won't understand. I often find myself saying "iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch", which always feels exceedingly awkward. Does anyone know of a better way for me to do this? Am I simply doomed to permanently listing off, individually, all of these products? ;P
e.g. a flashlight app on Huawei G600 which has excessive permissions including reading contacts and starts on boot.
No, more like Linux has bad publicity as obtuse and difficult - which it very often is with many other distros. Ubuntu is (intended to be) Linux that "just works".
I don't think Canonical is afraid of "oh no Linux, nerds!", they're more likely afraid of "oh no Linux, like [insert other distro where you spend more time tweaking configs and compiling your kernel than using it]!"
Doesn't hold true. "Microsoft" had no problems with users being confused by "Windows". People went out of their way to make sure to buy PCs installed with Windows from Dell, HP, etc.
From a pure financial basis I would wager good money that Android is more expensive for manufacturers than Windows Phone is, not even including the Microsoft patent tax (where it most certainly is more expensive for any vendor who signed on), in the same way that Linux was actually more expensive for Dell to put on a laptop than a full copy of Windows was.
When Samsung or Motorola or HTC or LG decide to go with Android they commit themselves to significant software engineering expenses. Those who try to under-fund those activities suffer in the market (Motorola and Sony being two prime examples).
Windows Phone, in contrast, is built to put the vast majority of the software engineering costs on Microsoft's side, and the activities required by a hardware vendor are dramatically reduced.
I only mention this because there's a recurring, very detached from reality theme that vendors choose Android because it is "free" (excluding the possibility that vendors have to license the non-ASOP Google apps and services). That might be true for the cheapest of the cheap devices, but it is completely untrue for the top tier makers.
The price for moving all the porting effort to Microsoft is inflexibility. For example, WP7 supported only Qualcomm SoC and nothing else. Meanwhile, in the Android world, the vendors (mostly SoC vendors) had to do engineering, but they could use Exynos or Tegra or any other SoC they wanted.
Another significant part of the engineering is customization. It is not that we, the geeks, want the manufacturers to customize their Android builds (see the popularity of the Nexus and AOSP builds for other phones). But they have a choice and they chose to do it. In the Windows world, they don't have such a choice.
So it is not a black/white. It is a set of compromises and constrains on a curve. It is up to a vendor to pick the optimal point, after weighting costs and benefits.
You buy a PC (as opposed to a Mac) -> It runs Windows
You buy a phone (as opposed to an iPhone)-> It runs Android
I hope that doesn't happen, though.